uk.com secondary domains

Do these domains have difficulty ranking in the organic listings?

[Gillian]

Hello, we are just launching some new sites that have the second level url domains E.g. www.widgets.uk.com. I have just been reading that these second level domains are difficult to rank in the organic listings and Google has even removed a large number of websites from its index with these second level domains.

Does anyone have any experience with websites that have a second level domain? Should we just start fresh with top level domains?

Thanks

[Mark_A]

I hadn't heard that they had been penalised.
As it happens I do know someone who has one.
I would avoid them myself, too hard to remember.

[piatkow]

Joe Public typing in a domain will expect example.co.uk or example.com